I have a D710A and I have saved several pre-made text; i.e. "I'm on the way home", "I'm getting Gas/at the car wash", etc. Then I just select the message and resend it, it goes to my wife's email or cell phone. APRSLink gives you the option of email address macros and makes APRS much more useful to me. I use email forwarding so that my wife's texting/email account isn't exposed to the world on APRS.FI or other servers. Maybe if some creative hams came out with more interfacing gadgets to APRS it might start to grow again? I could imagine some kind of texting device that makes it easier to text would/could take off.

Um, roughly every human over the age of four carries exactly that now. No license, no drilling holes in the car, no tech knowledge required, infinitely dependable and simple to use.

True, so why do you use ham radio? Use your cell phone.

I was actually refering Hams using APRS and making it more useful - (personally I don't pay the extra $10.00 per month for texting on my cell, so it's nice to be able to send text or email to my wife via radio.)

Addressing the original question "is APRS RF in decline", yes it is.People overwhelmingly do exactly what you suggest above, theyuse their cell phone.

If we're going to try and reach out to youngsters today, we'd be fightinga losing battle if we approached our "sales pitch" with things like"You can send a text message to someone else who has also spent alot of money and become licensed and knows how to operate the kludgyequipment that's a couple of decades old".

If we're going to make APRS useful, sending txt messages is hardly aselling point. Personally, I think it's hard to find much of any sellingpoint. I wish there WERE. But IMO, the answer to the original questionis - Yes. The numbers may be going up, but the use(fulness) is verymuch in decline.

Lumpy N0EQ

Did you do a lot of those Emergency Broadcast Warnings?Yes. Had it been an actual emergency I would have hid.

You can see all of the APRS mobiles in the county and if those mobiles are running an APRS ready radio (D710 - FTM350R) you can send them a text that will send them an alarm with the message. I have surprised a few hams this way including some that I actually know! Yes it could be hazardous for somebody if they are surprised and they are distracted. I try to monitor and make sure they are parked! I surprised a fellow ham from my area who was doing a cross-country trip and he replied , but it is very slow typing with the current radios because they are not equipped with keyboards.

APRS on RF isn't declining in USE, only in popularity, probably. Think about it, if it's use is for entertainment then using the internet for APRS works just dandy. If the use of APRS is related to something where the internet isn't available then RF is all you have left. I think the reliability of the source of the information changes according to the circumstances, right? If that use is for emergency purposes, then you'd better have an RF source available, or there may be no source... - 'Doc

This afternoon I got some useful info from my D700: a severe weather warning was issued for the area I was driving into. Since I'm on vacation I am in an area I don't get alerts for on my cell phone, and I don't normally listen to broadcast band radio. It was very nice to know what to expect.

It's not just the software, but the hardware. My VX-8R can send and receive APRS messages (and has done so), but it's about as easy as chiseling the message in granite and sending the stone by carrier pigeon.

You, sir, just nailed it on the head. HTs are a very antiquated way of thinking about mobile radio. Some company needs to realize that a radio should in essence be a smartphone, with a big screen, full keyboard or virtual keyboard, and especially the ability to write and run applications on it. The only difference is the frequency and modulation modes. In fact, to use APRS, I am using my Android with APRSdroid and a bluetooth headset wired up to the HT, which essentially turns the HT into a dumb terminal and lets the Android run the show.

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